Catching Fish in the Desert

Israel is described as being “one of the world's foremost idea factories”, has attracted many of the top global technology companies and is said to have among the highest number of start-up businesses of any country anywhere.

What is its secret? I’ve just been re-reading the book, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. In it, the authors reveal and dissect the drivers behind Israel’s success in creating and sustaining national innovation and entrepreneurship.

For us here in the Caribbean, growing our economies, creating sustainable new businesses and stimulating a culture of innovation are now among our governments’ top development concerns. This book provides insights into what has helped Israel to see incredible success in this arena, particularly during the last 20 years. 

The geopolitical contexts are vastly different, of course, but our two regions do share some things in common: Israel was [is] a small society with very little in the way of natural resources and began with few obvious saleable products other than tourism.

Start-up Nation explores what has enabled the Israelis to embrace entrepreneurship and helped to propel their country to become a USD $195 billion economy:

• Information and communication technologies (ICT) widely dispersed and leveraged to bridge distance and connect the country to new markets.

• The critically important role that national miliary service plays in developing initiative, cross-disciplinary creativity, leadership skills and a positive attitude to risk among young Israelis.

• The crucial need for visionary political leadership and the power of BHAG’s (big, hairy audacious goals).

• A mindset that turns crisis into opportunity can create an entire new industry out of a need. “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade”, the old saw goes. In the Negev desert, if life hands you only brackish, salty water, you begin farming shrimp, lobster and tilapia for export. (Israel is today a world leader in agriculture, water conservation and solar energy.)

• Infrastructure that supports a venture capital financing network, that helps connect those at home with ideas to those abroad with money, while reducing investor risk.

• An immigration policy that attracts talent, knowledge and skills back to the country, particularly from among its Diaspora.

• The focused, deliberate building-up of industrial and academic clusters to create sustainable centres of excellence.

Anyone interested in learning what entrepreneurship and innovation need to grow will find this a worthwhile read. It’s accessible and well-paced; we learn what has worked in Israel and what hasn’t, and there are numerous stories of real-life entrepreneurs and business ventures. (The book was released in 2009 but the authors even presciently foreshadowed the social changes seen earlier this year during the Arab Spring.)

Check it out.